793.94/6216: Telegram
The Minister in China (Johnson) to the Secretary of State
[Received April 24—2 p.m.]
365. My 357, April 22, 8 p.m. I have just received a call from Y. C. T. Shen, Director of the Asiatic Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nanking. Shen is the one who handed Sir Miles the letter from Lo Wen-kan referred to in my 358, April 23, noon. Shen told me that Lampson had told him of his conversation with me. He intimated that Nanking was loath to participate in any formal negotiations for an armistice. He stated that Nanking looked upon Chiang Monlin’s suggestions as being purely personal and said that Nanking’s view was that a formal or written understanding was unnecessary; that assuming the Japanese were sincere in their statement that they did not wish to come farther the Chinese on their side certainly did not intend to make any attack and they thought that the Chinese and Japanese military in the field should be able to come to some informal arrangement to that end. He said that Nanking hoped that the friendly powers would warn Japan that China intended to defend the Peiping and Tientsin areas with every means at its disposal and that further advance by Japan would involve international complications. He suggested that protocol powers might do this.
I informed Shen that I would transmit to Washington Nanking’s hope that we might participate in a warning but that I did not believe that Washington would find it possible to issue any such warning to Japan and as regards the protocol I pointed out to him that the protocol was between the powers and China and not between the powers and Japan and that I therefore did not see how the protocol was involved.